"Greater energy and greater passion is more extraordinary than greater genius."

Lt. General Arjun Ray, PVSM, VSM (Retd)

Peace is Everybody's Business - Preface

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is
only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

-John Lennon

Whenever the subject of alienation comes up for discussion, it
is common and fashionable to talk only of India's 140 million
Muslims. The scale and intensity of alienation is much more-
Dalits, Schedule Castes, Schedule Tribes, other backward classes,
those living below the poverty line and, not to forget, people living
in onethird of India's districts that are affected by insurgency
in some form or the other. While it is not possible to put down an
exact figure, on a conservative estimate, the alienated population
in India would be a staggering 500 million. Alienated sections of
society are like dry gun powder just waiting to explode. The nation
ignores them at its peril.

This book is about conflictprevention, hope and peace for the
oppressed and the alienated, and the effective use of soft power to
win back estranged communities into the social and political mainstream.
Past strategies in managing alienated societies have been
derived from two extreme ideological positions. The first position
is of the view that those who take up arms are enemies of the state
and should be thrown into jails or destroyed. The second position
is that of ultraliberals who believe that individual rights are more
important than national security. This lot, usually denounced as the
loonyfringe, is meant to be ignored. This book suggests an alternative
strategy on how to reconcile these two extreme positions.

What follows is not a lengthy treatise on Operation Sadbhavna,
a successful sociopolitical strategy in conflictprevention in one
of India's most sensitive and remote regions-Ladakh. Sadbhavna
is the inspiration to find an explanation on why we succeeded, and
then to extrapolate an overarching concept for preventing conflict,
by dealienating large sections of society who strongly feel that the
state has been unfair to them.

As soon as I assumed the command of 14 Corps in northern
Kashmir in June 2000, there was an urgency to set out the strategic
vision and operational objectives for the field forces. The military
vision had to take into account the aspirations and perceptions
of the people of the region. Above all, we wished to win popular
support in order to synergize military efforts to defend the borders
against infiltration and prevent a repeat of Kargil, 1999.